


Good Partners

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Fluff, Gen, Mecha, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A routine mission to protect colony borders goes awry, and Kyouko re-evaluates a few priorities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Partners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [panda_hiiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_hiiro/gifts).



> For Cha, who requested Kyouko/Mami and giant robots on my tumblr, but it didn't end up being shippy enough to get the tag.

She came around to her brain feeling like it could burst out of her skull and the sound of her ears ringing. Disoriented, Kyouko put a hand to her head to try and stop the pounding, then stiffened sharply as she remembered what had happened.

Screecher grenade. It had blindsided her mech almost as soon as they’d landed. Only taking a second to make sure her life support systems were still good, she quickly activated the reboot protocols and brought her command controls back online so she could see the viewer interface.

The field was empty.

The soldiers from the dropped hive they’d been sent to destroy were gone, but so was Mami. 

The pounding had shifted from her head, her heart now racing with a wash of fear. There wasn’t a chance in hell Mami would have just left her behind and returned to the command ship alone. Most of the other pilots probably would have, but not Mami, no matter how much Central got on her case for it. No matter how much Kyouko had made fun of her for it when they'd first been assigned together. But her sensors weren’t registering a distress beacon of any kind either, and trying their hailing frequency got nothing but dead air.

Okay. Okay, no panicking, she could handle this. Everything was back up and running, so search mode was go.

Kyouko gritted her teeth and surged her will through the neural connection net, gripping the emergency motion controls tightly as she forced her mech to its feet. It hurt like hell; she could feel the damage to the left side where something had probably pounced her as soon as she’d gone down. But she fought past it, instead concentrating on recalibrating the sensors to search for hive soldiers on the hope, or fear, that wherever they were, Mami would be.

A few blips appeared on the screen in front of her to the south, and she turned in that direction towards the canyon past the edge of the colony’s oxygen greenhouses.

The sight that met her when her mech peered over the ledge made her heart freeze in her chest. Hive soldiers littered the canyon floor; some energy bound, some shot, most crushed by scorched and fallen rock. The blips she’d registered were a few still barely twitching. And in the middle of it all, half buried in dead carapaces, was Mami, her mech unmoving and unlit.

Kyouko wasted no time bounding down to land with a crunch among dead soldiers before making a beeline for her partner. _“Mami!"_

The mech’s damage was even worse up close. The left arm had nearly been sheared through by lethally sharp pincers, there were puncture wounds through the torso, and burn marks streaked across most of the right side and the head. 

She started throwing bodies aside to uncover the pilot insertion chamber. The hidden port to the right side of the torso had been toasted, so using her own mech’s extra charge pack to give Mami’s a boost was out of the question. Which meant she had to get the other pilot out and hope to God that life support hadn’t been out long enough for Mami to suffocate inside the thing.

Not caring about her own injuries, nor whether there might have been more soldiers in hiding in the cliff walls or under their own dead, waiting for a chance like this, Kyouko activated the emergency protocols to open her own chamber. Forcibly disconnecting herself from the neural controls and ignoring the spikes of pain in the back of her neck from doing so, she hefted herself out of the central tube to run across the opened panel to the pilot insertion chamber of Mami’s mech. “Work, work, work, come on, dammit, _work_ ," she muttered under her breath as she forced the override panel open and started keying in codes.

She held her breath until the panel finally sparked to life to accept the punched in numbers then moved aside as the chamber opened with a hiss.

Seeing Mami made her feel ill. The other girl was just as much of a mess as her mech, hanging pale and limp in the central tube with only the neural net keeping her from slumping into the manual controls entirely. Her face was bloody, as was the inside of the tube, which was cracked to the side. Her left arm dangled at an unnatural angle against the manual controls, her hand gashed and bruised from God only knew what.

But she was still breathing.

Kyouko bit back a small sob of relief as she clambered up onto the manual controls and crouched in front of her partner, quickly disconnecting the neural net so that she could cradle Mami properly.

"Nn."

Kyouko involuntarily held the other girl tighter at the weak groan. “Mami?"

Gold eyes opened, glazed over and unfocused. “Oh… good. You’re okay."

She would swear she felt her heart stutter, then a weak, disbelieving laugh bubbled up out of her throat. " _I’m_ okay? You- _God_ , you… Mami, what the _hell_ was this? _Why_?"

"Mnnh. Couldn’t let them eat you. That’s not what a good partner does," Mami mumbled weakly, then closed her eyes again and rested her head against Kyouko’s shoulder as her body went slack in exhaustion.

Kyouko bit her lip, then wiped suddenly wet eyes with the back of her hand. Gently, so very gently, she carried Mami into the chamber of her own mech and hooked herself back in, switching entirely to neural controls to keep from jostling her as it closed around them.

Central was going to have some words about returning with a pilot, but not the mech.

Central could kindly go fuck themselves.

Good partners didn’t leave each other behind.

 

===

 

Kyouko bit her tongue and resisted the urge to snap a sarcastic comment in response to the disdainful sniff the nurse made before handing back her bag. It wasn’t like the snack inside was for _her_ anyway, the crabby old bat. Shouldering the small pack, she shuffled through the checkpoint and headed straight for the elevator to the specialized ward kept for injured pilots.

Every other trip there since she’d gotten out herself had been a disappointment, but there was this desperate little itch in her brain that refused to go away. _‘Maybe today, maybe today,’_ it said in time with her footsteps as she passed another checkpoint and turned through hallway after hallway.

No, _definitely_ today, she told herself. Mami was going to come out of the tank, and Kyouko would be the first to meet her besides the nurses and technicians, and then they’d break out the food and-

She quickly skidded to a halt and ducked back to keep from being seen when she spotted Kyuubey standing in the hallway by Mami’s room, talking to a woman in a white medical officer uniform. 

Peeking around the corner just a little to confirm it was really him, Kyouko bit the inside of her cheek in frustration. If the creepy asshole was here, that meant both that Mami was awake, and Central already knew and had sent their liason to deliver the dressing down.

God _dammit._

She’d been hoping she could at least beat them to Mami.

Kyuubey snatched the folder from the officer with a demanding flourish, sweeping long ears out of his expressionless face with a clawed hand. Kyouko bit harder to keep from shuddering or growling and stayed where she was until he was good and gone. The medical officer left as well after taking one last check through the observation window, and Kyouko headed for the room.

When she peered in, Mami was still sitting in the tank and being dried off by nurses while a technician checked her vitals. “Figures he wouldn’t even wait til she was dressed," Kyouko muttered darkly under her breath, then plastered on a smile and knocked on the window to get her combat partner’s attention.

The nurses barely even glanced up, but Mami raised her head and gave a small smile on seeing her, then lifted a hand -the one that had been so mangled before- to wave a little. Kyouko’s own grin grew more genuine at seeing that, then she took off her bag and dangled it in front of the window before grabbing a seat to watch and wait.

It was another ten minutes before she was allowed in. Mami had been dressed in the boring grey patient’s uniform and laid in one of the floating gurneys with a heat lamp to help her finish drying off, and her normally immaculately-curled hair spread limply over the pillow from the tank’s chemicals. 

Kyouko dragged a stool over and sat down, wrinkling her nose as she toyed with a bit of Mami’s hair. “Hope they’re giving you a bath soon. And a brush."

"Me too," Mami said, making a slight face of her own. “I’d forgotten how much this stuff itches when it dries."

"Any food plans?" When Mami shook her head ‘no’, Kyouko opened up her pack. “Good, because I went all the way to that shop in the bay colony you like, and it’d suck if this went to waste."

Mami stared at her in surprise. “The Twin Moon Cake Shop?"

"That’s the one."

" _Kyouko_ , that’s way too expensive! You shouldn’t have-"

"Hey, what I do with my stipend is _my_ business," Kyouko said, automatically puffing herself up, then caught her temper and made herself calm back down as she carefully took the cooler box out of the bag, along with two forks. “Besides… I wanted to thank you for sticking around to save my butt out in the canyon, and I didn’t really have any better ideas than this."

Mami’s expression softened as Kyouko laid the cake box in her lap and helped her to sit up, leaning against her for support. “You didn’t have to."

"I _wanted_ to. So let’s chow down, hey?"

She’d been kind of guessing on the fly when she’d ordered their blackberry and cherry sweet almond cream special, but the noise of bliss Mami made when she took the first bite was _so_ worth the anxiety. And her own first bite definitely made it worth the price, too.

"Madoka and the others said they hope you get better soon," Kyouko said as they ate. “They miss you. Homura’s running them ragged in training."

"She would," Mami said with more fond exasperation than bite, then laid her fork down with a sigh. “You may be seeing one of them more often soon."

"Huh?"

"Central’s handed down their verdict via Kyuubey. I’ve been grounded from any pilot or training duties for the next six months."

Kyouko stiffened, a spark of rage lighting in her chest. Dammit, she _knew_ there was a reason for the constant bad feeling that bastard gave her. " _Why? I_ was the one who abandoned the mech to bring you back."

"But it wouldn’t have been so damaged in the first place had I not chosen to ignore our training and stay behind with you," Mami said. “At least, that’s the way they see it."

"Well, fuck that," Kyouko said with a snort, surprising the blonde girl. “I’d be a smear on the canyon wall if you hadn’t, and then they would have lost a mech _and_ a pilot. So they’re idiots. And I’m gonna tell ‘em as much."

That earned her a blank blink. “You’re… _what_?"

"I’m gonna tell ‘em they’re idiots for grounding you!"

"Have you hit your head? They’ll probably ground _you_ as well if you do that."

"So what? I’ll deal. It’s not like it’ll be a _huge_ pay cut. Besides, then maybe we could go out to lunch a few times or something. ‘Cause good partners should know each other better, right?" she said, holding out her fork.

Mami gave an incredulous little giggle, but relaxed as she tapped her own fork against it in a manner like the tapping swords of old. “Right."


End file.
